Since occupying Palestine in June 4, 1967, detention operations have constituted one of the most prominent policies pursued against Palestinians. More than one million detention cases of Palestinians have been recorded, including all categories of the Palestinian society of women, children, elderly, academics, journalists, political and social activists and strugglers, who look for the freedom of nation, land and humans.
The occupying state has not shown, at any stage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, any concern for the rules of the international legal system, or the international treaties, laws and agreements. However, Israel tried to consolidate more systematic crimes, relying on racist laws and legislations that violate the core of human rights, thereby it obviously violated all international resolutions. This has not been limited to any particular stage, as the successive Israeli governments have pursued and developed more measures to impose higher levels of control and supervision over Palestinians through the apartheid system. These methods have affected all aspects of the Palestinian life, where the cause of Palestinian detainees has constituted the most prominent issues reflecting the extent of systematic violations and crimes that the occupying state has entrenched through its prison’s system.
The occupying state has used the cause of Palestinian detainees for decades as a central tool in its internal political conflicts, through systematic competitions to impose more crimes and restrictions against Palestinians. This was evident in the Israeli election campaigns, as well as during wars and political upheavals. The incitement for revenge against the detainees intensifies to gain supporters and increase votes.
The occupation army carries out arbitrary arrest operations on a daily basis across the occupied Palestinian territories in a brutal manner, as these arrests have turned into a part of the Palestinian life. Detention operations commence by identifying the targeted house, storming it, and exploding its doors, often in the midnight to intimidate everyone inside, using all means of violence, including intensive beatings, assaults, and forcing the family to gather in a specific place in the house. Then, inspections, vandalism and destruction of property are carried out in a provocative and vengeful manner for several hours.
The detainee is then transported in a military vehicle to the army camps and then to detention and interrogation centers, then transferred to one of the central prisons. Afterwards, show trials begin, based on racist military orders and laws aiming at conquering and punishing Palestinians.
Throughout these stages, detainees are exposed to all forms of torture, mistreatment, and humiliation, turning their arrest into a multi-layered crime that violates international legal and human rights standards.
Over decades of struggle by Palestinian detainees to regain their legitimate rights and confront the attempts of deprivation, they were able to impose a special regime and detention conditions, through several steps of struggle, in which many detainees were martyred. Their struggle was represented in open hunger strikes, as detainees became able to gain the minimum of their rights, which enabled them to overcome the racist rules and regulations of the occupation.
As we previously mentioned, everything achieved by detainees had a heavy price, starting from pens, newspaper, magazines, TVS, radios, education, medical treatment, cooking inside rooms, breaks, canteens, families and lawyers visits and many other simple rights.
After October 7, 2023, the prison’s administration began operations of systematic and collective torture conducted by special forces subordinate to the IPS, who deprived detainees of their simplest rights. In coincidence with the war on Gaza, the IPS launched a parallel war inside the Israeli prisons, headed by the extremist Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, and the government of settlers who lead Israel nowadays. This war is represented in storming prison’s rooms and sections, turning them into cells, practicing assault and humiliation, confiscating detainees’ belongings, such as clothes and blankets. Each detainee only has a thin blanket, a thin cover and the clothes he wears on.
Moreover, the IPS has closed the canteen and canceled the break.
Attacks and assaults included severe beating, led to fractures in the limbs and the chest, and the corridors were full of blood. As a result, 40 detainees were martyred, whom identities are known, where the occupation’s media has announced the martyrdom of tens of detainees from Gaza.
Retaliatory policies have been imposed on detainees, including war crimes, such as torture, enforced disappearance, starvation, deprivation of treatment and medication, canceling family visits, canceling lawyers visits, in addition to the overcrowding in prisons due to the increasing daily arrests. Indeed, the prisons were turned into places of torture.
It is important to highlight the seriousness of changes that affected the cause of detainees through digital transformations. By the end of last October, the total number of detainees held in Israeli prisons was (5250), including (40) women, (170) children, (700) sick detainees and (1320) under the administrative detention, which is a precautionary detention, without charges or trials.
Since that time, especially after October 2023, changes have been imposed on the cause of detainees and detention cases, as data began to accelerate due to the daily arrests.
(10100) Palestinian detainees are currently held in Israeli prisons, including (3398) detainees under the administrative detention, making it the highest number of administrative detainees in the history of the Captive Movement since the first uprising, in addition to (95) women and (270) children.
(11.100) arrest cases have been recorded in the West Bank and Jerusalem, including (420) arrests cases for women and (740) cases for children. Furthermore, (9000) orders of administrative detention have been issued, in addition to arresting thousands of detainees from Gaza Strip. However, the exact number of detainees from Gaza cannot be determined due to the policy of enforced disappearance imposed on them by the Israeli occupation authorities. It is worth mentioning that the majority of detainees from Gaza were classified as illegal fighters, which is another form of administrative detention applied in the West Bank.
During the past few months, we were able to document hundreds of testimonies from released detainees, and other detainees who were visited by our legal teams. These testimonies carried shocking and horrifying facts, that revealed torture, severe beating and rapeby soldiers and police dogs, in addition to the methods they pursued in using the detainees’ families, wives, mothers, fathers and children as hostages and human shields, as well as assaults, curses and ongoing humiliation.
The prisons’ administration has turned these crimes and procedures into a systematic consistent reality. For instance, they pursued the crime of starvation against detainees, which led to the loss of 25 kgs for each detainee and resulted in consistent health problems, where this crime became a key factor that threatens detainees’ fate. The policies of the IPS concentrated on pursuing means of humiliation and degradation in order to affect the spirit of Palestinian detainees and deny their humanity, in addition to the systematic medical crimes which constituted the main reason for the martyrdom of many detainees.
It is necessary to highlight the policy of enforced disappearance against detainees from Gaza, as the Israeli occupation has arrested thousands of citizens from Gaza Strip, including workers who were residing in the lands occupied in 1948 for work, as well as civilians who were arrested throughout the ground invasion.
We have seen hundreds of people piled up on military vehicles, naked and in humiliating circumstances, as they were taken to military camps. During the past months, the occupation authorities refused to disclose any information about their identities and numbers. However, we were able to have some information from released detainees. Furthermore, the occupation authorities have prevented the International Committee of the Red Cross from visiting detainees, where all international human rights organizations failed to stop the horrific crimes of the occupation.
The crime was not limited to the enforced disappearance, as the violations experienced by detainees from Gaza were never reported in prisons throughout the history.
The Israeli soldiers revealed their brutality and practiced many crimes in dealing with detainees. They documented their crimes by themselves through filming the torture and assault against detainees, challenging the world by their inhumane and unethical behaviors.
We are still paying the price for this policy, and still living in a state of anxiety and fear for thousands of Palestinians from Gaza about whom we know nothing.
There are many testimonies from recently released detainees from Gaza or those whom lawyers managed to visit inside prisons and detention centers, speaking about killings and executions carried out in front of them. It is worth mentioning that among the thousands abducted by the occupation from the Gaza Strip, 1.618 detainees were acknowledged by the occupation and classified as illegal fighters.
According to the above mentioned data, we confirm that all these crimes have afflicted women, children, elderly, sick people and people with special needs, and we also confirm that these crimes amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, where the language cannot describe what we have heard of testimonies and stories from detainees. This showed a state of failure by the international community and human rights organizations in light of the horrific crimes committed against our people in Gaza and the aggression against Palestinians in general in all the occupied territories, in addition to violations and crimes committed against male and female detainees held in Israeli prisons.
